


Sea Longing

by bunn



Category: The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Fallowhides, Greenwood the Great, Mortality, Rhovanion, Tam Lin Inverted, The Beginnings of Hobbits, Third Age, natural death, the Escape from Deathlessness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:22:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26216347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bunn/pseuds/bunn
Summary: "It was often said (in other families) that long ago one of the Took ancestors must have taken a fairy wife. That was, of course, absurd*, but..."- The Hobbit, Ch 1, An Unexpected Party* But what if?Inspired by the wonderful art created by androgynouscardinal for Tolkien Reverse Fandom Bang 2020. Beta thanks to raiyana.
Relationships: OFC Elf / OMC Hobbit
Comments: 45
Kudos: 75
Collections: Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang 2020





	1. Greenwood the Great

The first rosy sunlight lit on the new oak-leaves just above her head, touched with dew and sparkling in the dawn light. 

Above the blue and misty plains that reached out west beyond the forest, the star of the morning was fading as the sky paled. She had watched the stars turn and dance above her all the night long. Now the dew damped the cloak wrapped around her, and the bark of the wide level branch on which she lay was dark with moisture. She sat up and stretched, as all around her the birds broke into song to greet the coming morn. She swung down from the tree, and began making her way quietly through the great mossy trunks, still half-obscured by drifting mist. 

Two ancient oak trees leant towards one another beside the stream, as if exchanging a secret. The golden morning light shone between them, catching golden-green upon the moss, the bright outline softened by the morning-mist that rose from the stream. 

A movement caught her eye, and she fell into watchful immobility. 

A slender figure, limned in light, moved between the trees. She thought for a moment it was, like her, an elf, but as he moved past a low-hung branch she realised that he was far too small to be one of her own people. 

One of the Little People then, those who haunted the Western fringes of her own great Greenwood. 

She had seen them before, now and again, collecting bird’s eggs, hunting birds with stones and slings, or collecting nuts and mushrooms. Usually they were round-faced and cheerful, travelling with a happy litter of the tiniest children tumbling and laughing behind them. 

This young man moved swift and silent as an owl on the wing. He was alone, and if he had not been caught against the light, she might not even have noticed him. Curious, she moved closer. 

He saw her when she stepped across a fallen log, and froze, about to run, when she called to him. 

“A fine morning, traveller!” 

Even then he hesitated for a moment, leaning forward on the brink of flight before he replied, as if he were some small shy beast of the woodland verges. She smiled, stepped forward to lean on the trunk of a broad oak, and his wide eyes relaxed a little.

“I hope the morning will be good,” he said, stepping back and lifting his hand in the strange greeting of the Little People. “I’m Tam. Tam of the Tûca clan. I’m hunting.”

“And I am Lyski of the Greenwood, wandering here in the margins of the forest for no reason at all,” she told him merrily.

His eyes went rounder at that. “No reason at all?”

“No reason but the joy of it, because the stars shone all night, and now the sky is blue and the birds are singing,” she said, laughing because the leaves and grasses were so green in the sunlight, and his small face looked so astonished. 

He lost the astonished look and laughed too, for a moment at least. “Perhaps you’re here to bring me some good luck. That would be very welcome and more than a bit overdue.”

“You’ve been troubled with bad luck?” She swung herself up onto a low mossy branch only a few feet from the ground, and lay along it so that she could more easily look him in the eyes. 

They were serious again and he nodded. “A terrible hungry spring it’s been, this year, and there’s been a fever going round too.” He hesitated. “Have your people...?” 

She shook her head. “My people are not much troubled by sickness.” 

“Lucky for you,” he said with a grimace that crinkled the corners of his eyes. “But sickness comes and goes. There’s something else too, now. There’s... they say there’s something in the shadows. Something that never was there before. A dark blot at the corner of your eye that comes from the trees...” he broke off, looking around quickly. Alarmed, she also scanned the branches, one hand on her long dagger, but saw nothing out of place. 

“If there’s danger, why are you here all alone? Where are your people?”

His small face wrinkled into a rueful grimace. “We still need to eat. One person hunting quietly is hard to see.”

“I saw you,” she pointed out, mischievously. 

“...Hard to see, for anyone who doesn’t have eyes like an elf,” he agreed with a glimmer of a smile. “This is one of our best hunting-grounds at this time of year, but our Mam says we can’t risk camping here any more.” 

“I have been here all night, watching the stars turn above the trees, and I have seen and felt nothing wrong.”

“Well, that’s good then.” He looked around again at the trees, and then back at her. “You think it’s safe enough for breakfast? I’ve got a good many mushrooms, if you’d care to join me.” He held up a wicker basket which was indeed full to the brim with the round white mushrooms of the wood-eaves. 

She put her head on one side to regard him with interest. “I thought you said your people were short of food?” 

“Well... we are. But it’s only polite to share breakfast, if there is anything at all to share — and anyway, it’s not often that I get a chance to share my breakfast with an Elf.” 

“And I had not thought of eating this morning, when the air is so rich and full of the smell of green leaves,” she laughed. “But here! Since you offer me your food, I must surely offer you mine, and I have nut-bread and dried fruit in my pack, more than enough to share. Let’s eat, and talk, and watch the trees together for this strange danger that you speak of.” 

“Very well then,” he said politely, and sat down on the grass. “Will you eat in the tree, or come down to join me? I hope you won’t expect me to climb up there: my people aren’t too good at perching like birds in the treetops.” 

She looked up at the treetops hundreds of feet high above the low branch she was lying on, and laughed merrily at the thought of the solemn little person climbing awkwardly up to join the finches singing high above. “I’ll join you on the grass,” she promised, and did so.

******

They ate a little, and drank from the stream nearby, then found themselves, without really meaning to linger, exchanging stories of their families. 

Tam told her of his three small sisters, who were always getting into trouble together, and his Mam, a person of considerable importance in the wandering clan.

“And you her eldest son!” Lyski laughed. “How grand that is! I can offer nothing to match you: my family are most unimportant among our people, and I am the least important of all!”

“But you’re an Elf,” Tam protested. “In stories, Elves are always important.”

She rolled over cheerfully on the grass and scratched her nose. “That’s because stories are all about kings and princes, high dooms and noble quests. A story about watching a tree grow from an acorn to a great height, and how the purple butterflies flit from leaf to leaf in the wind in summer? It’s a joy to watch, but there are never enough words for ‘leaf’ and ‘wind’ and ‘butterfly’ to do the tale justice.”

“I think I could listen to you talk about anything,” Tam said seriously. “You have a beautiful voice.” 

She blinked at him in surprise. “And you have very fine hairy toes,” she settled on as a reply, which for some reason made him laugh. 

“You do! I could tell a tale of them,” she protested, and he only laughed more. “They look so soft and curly...” 

But even as she spoke, she saw a faint dark flicker in the trees behind him, and with it came a stale smell, sweet and sickly. She came to her feet in one movement, her long knife in her hand. Tam scrambled to his feet next to her, one hand on the precious basket of mushrooms, and the other holding a stone. 

The birds near at hand were no longer singing.

“Can you see it?” he asked her urgently.

She shook her head. “Not now. But though the sky is still bright, I feel a shadow on my heart, don’t you? And there’s a foul air...”

Tam lifted his snub nose and sniffed, his hand tightening around the stone. Then something moved again in the shade under trees. Tam shouted sharply: “Run!” and threw the stone. 

She wasted no time taking his advice, but turned and fled. He had hit something, from the fleshy thud and the hissing sound behind them, but there was movement on the ground and in the trees behind as they fled, leaping fallen trees and mossy tummocks until they tumbled side by side out of the suddenly all-too-shadowed leafy eaves of the great forest, up onto the short sunlit turf, with startled rabbits bolting in all directions. 

There was no sign or sound of anything following. 

“Did you see what it was?” 

Tam grinned suddenly up at her, triumph on his face. “I did, and I hit it, too. But there was more than one of them. They looked like... like spiders. Only far too big.”

She sheathed the knife carefully, then wrapped her arms around and hugged herself, frowning. “I’ve heard tales of such monsters, tales out of the darkness of the long past. No natural spider is so large. There was something very wrong about them.”

Tam nodded unhappily. “Still,” he said, holding up the basket, which was still almost filled with mushrooms, “It could have been worse! We weren’t hurt, and what’s more, I’ve saved breakfast. Come and help me tell Mam about this? She’s a very high opinion of Elves, has our Mam.” 

His brave smile warmed her, and the cold, bitter fear of the shadow that had fallen over the wood, and the echoes that it called to her mind began to slip away. “I’m flattered to hear it,” she told him, smiling, and took the hand he offered so that he could lead her towards the camp of the Little People. 

*****

She had met the Little People before, but she had never seen their homes. Now she realised why: she could have walked past this place fifty paces or so away and not noticed the low close-woven roofs huddled among bushes and tussocks, the small door-ways curtained with grass mats. This was a place made to go unnoticed. Even the wiry, brindled dogs did not bark, when they came sidling out to sniff at her knees.

But the children were not so quiet. They came hurrying out as soon as they recognised her companion, calling out in high piping voices like small birds, reaching for the basket with tiny hands, and staring up at Lyski with round astonished eyes under their dark curls. 

“Whoa!” Tam said, holding the basket high. “Wait for them to be cooked you crowd of little savages!”

“I like them raw,” the tallest one said, sticking out her bottom lip, while at the same time, the two smallest ones put up a piercing cry: “I’m HUNgry!” 

Lyski, amused, knelt down to look at them. “How hungry are you?” she asked.

“STARving!” the smallest one said very loudly. “Levenses!”

“It isn’t time for elevenses yet,” Tam told them all with great authority. “Now, be quiet all of you and behave. This is my new friend Lyski. I’ve brought her to meet our Mam. She’s an elf.” 

This information was received with a very gratifying round of “Ooo!” from everyone except the very smallest, who was now trying to unpick the lacing on her boot. Tam went on to name all the children in order of size, pointing to each one in turn. By this time the smallest child, who turned out to be called Habbi, had begun chewing on her toe, and would not be dissuaded until Lyski picked him up and balanced him like a gnawing puppy in the crook of her arm; something that seemed to delight him almost as much as it did her. 

Tam, holding the basket high, hurried to a doorway. Then he paused, looking at Lyski. “I’d invite you in,” he said, with a worried frown. “But I’m thinking you might not fit, being so tall.” 

“I’m not as tall as that,” she said, smiling, and took his hand with her free one, ducking low to follow him inside. 

*****

The house turned out to be rather larger than she had expected, for it was partly dug into the hillside, a sort of cave, with the lean-to woven roof creating a sheltered space full of sun-dapples as the light came through the gaps in front of it. 

Sitting there comfortably on grassy tussocks, their small furry feet in the centre of their circle, were a number of small women spinning thread, spindles twirling industriously in their hands. 

One of them, with wrinkles around her eyes and hair that was grey at the edges, jumped to her feet as they came in. The resemblance to Tam was clear in her face. 

Lyski bowed low and set Habbi down on the floor, cautious not to catch her hair in the roof as she straightened again. Tam introduced her and told a brief tale of what they had seen in the forest edges. 

“And this is my Mam, Etta,” he said at last, turning to her.

Etta squinted up at her, raising her hand in greeting. “A long time since we’ve seen Elves in these parts,” she said. “Now we have Elves again, but a nasty old evil, too, and I can’t help wondering just what’s behind it all. Sit down, sit down, please, melady!”

Lyski settled carefully on the floor. “I’m no lady,” she objected. “Only an Elf of the Greenwood, wandering at my leisure. Call me Lyski, please!” 

“As you please,” Etta said, and then her lively face became stern. “Tam! Give that basket to Katla and fetch bread and salt for our guest! Katla! Get these ready, and send your sister for water. Where is my hat?” She peered around suspiciously as the small forms of her people flew enthusiastically in all directions, fetching and carrying. “Where’s the rotten thing hidden itself this time? Oh, thank you Anna.” 

She took the grass-woven hat and settled it firmly on her grey curls. Then she gave Lyski a bright smile. “That’s better. Can’t go receiving guests without a hat, can I? Now, we’ll soon have everything sorted out.” 

“I have eaten this morning,” Lyski said gently, “and Tam tells me that your people are having a lean time of it just now.”

Etta’s bright enthusiasm faltered for a moment. “Feeding youngsters does take a terrible lot of provender,” she admitted, and then rallied. “But it’s only proper to offer a bite and a cup to a guest.” 

“Perhaps just the smallest bite, then,” Lyski conceded, and Etta’s smile brightened again. 

“What are you doing out here, away from the great woods and your people?” Etta asked, and it was Lyski’s turn to falter under her bright inquisitive stare. 

“I was born when a west wind was blowing, you see.” She shrugged as if it didn’t matter. It probably didn’t, to these people who were guests in the world anyway. They might be used to hearing the call of strange voices from far away, in the way that the Elves of the Wood were not. 

Etta shook her grey curly head. “I don’t know what that means, I’m afraid, my dear.” 

“It means that for me there’s always something... out there. A yearning, a desire to look beyond the trees, to wander where the wind takes you, seeking new sights.” she explained. Perhaps the idea was not so familiar to mortals as she had expected. “Unrestful, they call it, in the home of my people in the mountains of Greenwood, to be born to the west wind. And so I wandered from the mountains to the forest, and through the forest to see the light on the plains... and so here I am, wandering still. Though I would not have left the trees so swiftly if it had not been for the thing that chased us.” 

“Ah!” Etta replied with enormous understanding. “Not quite respectable, is that it? Born to the west wind; that’s a new one, I must say. Bit different to hitching your skirts up to dance after one too many on a bright moonlit night, eh?” She laughed, a low chuckle very unlike the clear laugh of an Elf, and the women with her laughed too, including Lyski in a circle of something that she did not quite understand. She joined in with the laughing anyway, until Tam returned with a basket holding a knobbly loaf that looked small in even his hands, and a tiny dwarf-made dish of salt. 

“You said before that you had heard old tales of giant spiders,” he said to her, offering the bread. 

An old woman with a frizz of grey hair around her brown freckled face said gloomily. “Now we know what came to my Pippa and Maibret, the silly fool. And to little Aron, and that Udwar...” Her voice trailed off sadly, and there was a moment of quiet as they all shook their heads from side to side, mourning.

“At least now we know something about the danger,” Etta said, once the silence had stretched on a little while. “Go on, my dear, you said you’d have a bite with us.”

Lyski broke off the smallest piece of the bread that she could manage, and dipped it in the dish of salt, as Etta took the bread and pulled off a large piece for tiny Habbi, whose round eyes had grown rounder still at the sight of it. 

Then Etta passed the loaf around the room, each of them taking a tiny morsel. 

“Can you tell us any more about these spiders?” Tam asked, nibbling on his crust. “I never heard tell of such beasts before.” 

“Perhaps,” she said, troubled. “It is said that before ever the Moon rose through the starry skies, there was a great and terrible power that came from Outside, and took on spider form, weaving webs of darkness, and so she is called Gwerlum, the gloom-weaver. Have you not heard her name?”

They all shook their curly heads, faces earnest. “This fat old Gwerlum, she made a friendship with the Dark Enemy, but the Enemy betrayed her, and she fled, hiding in dark caves, and weaving evil. She had many children, or so the tale goes, and some of them entered the service of the Enemy and grew mighty in their turn. But never have I seen them with my own eyes. And the shadows that followed them...” she shook her head, remembering. “The songs tell a little of it, and now I have felt it myself. Despair, and fear, and hunger. Terrible hunger. Not like that of a beast at all...” The thought was a grim one, and so she turned away, looking to Tam’s bright eyes. “But Tam was not afraid. He hit one of them with a stone, and it fell back.”

“Well done, our Tam!” Etta exclaimed, but Tam returned her look and frowned. 

“How will you get back to your own people, Lyski?” he asked. “The woodland fringes aren’t safe any more.” 

That had not occurred to her, but the problem did not seem very pressing. She smiled. “Surely the shadow has not spread all the way along the western edge of the forest. I have felt and heard nothing of this, until now. The life of the Wood is green and joyful as ever in the spring, don’t you think?”

Etta frowned, making deep wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. “I can’t say that the Wood has made a habit of telling me such things.”

“And it’s not been too joyful for us, the last few years,either,” Tam agreed. “But then, we aren’t Elves. ”

“I think perhaps, if I travelled north, I could find a way to go up and past them,” she said, thinking aloud. “But I’m in no hurry. I wonder though, what will you do, if the Wood is too dangerous for you to hunt in?”

“I suppose we could set up farms, as the Big People do,” Etta said, looking very doubtful. “But that’s not something we’ve ever done much of. It attracts attention, having fields and all that sort of thing. We’re a quiet people. Not much for visitors... or not in the general way,” she added hastily. “The Big People — Men, I mean — they’re loud and greedy, not the kind of people you’d like to come visiting.”

“Would the Elvenking of the Wood aid us against the spiders?” Tam asked her. “They say he’s mighty in war, and rode out to fight the Enemy himself, long ago, and won a great battle. Would he come and defend his forests against the shadows?”

Lyski shook her head, unsure. “I don’t know. That was all long before I was born, and I know little of it.”

“Would you ask him to help us?” Tam asked. “I mean, if you were going that way anyway.” 

She looked down at small Habbi, who had curled up next to one of the women who were spinning, asleep with the crust of bread still in his hand. There was a delicacy to the infant, sleeping, that had not been apparent when he was awake. 

“I’ve never met the King,” she said. “But if you would come with me, Tam, we could go and ask him.”

***

It was only much later, when she knew both Tam and his people far better, that she understood how strange that journey must have been for him. Tam had not been born to the west wind blowing. 

To leave his family and all things familiar to go with a flighty, wandering chance-acquaintance to ask for the aid of a distant legend who might not even be real... it was a brave choice. None of the Little People ventured into the heart of the forest: they were a people of the sunlit woodland verges.

And yet he set off determinedly beside her, with his possessions packed into a woven grass bag on his shoulders, and followed her north along the forest-borders without a word of complaint. They walked for three days northward, keeping to the open plains, seeing no sign of shadows or dark scuttling among the trees. 

They did see movement of another kind, though; a party of grim-faced, heavy-bearded Naugrim with a cart drawn by small stout hairy ponies, stumping heavily westward. 

Lyski saw them first, from the vantage of a low rise in the ground, and automatically dipped down into the shelter of the long grass, to wait for them to pass by. 

But Tam, walking a little in front of her, hurried forward once he came in view of them, waving cheerfully. She watched from her hidden vantage point as the Naugrim turned to speak with him. They did not appear violent, at least for now, so she lay in the sweet grass watching as they talked: most of them square and burly, and Tam among them all like a slender child amid a ring of weathered boulders. 

Eventually, the cart moved slowly off again, and Tam looked around, puzzled. She waited until the Naugrim were well out of sight, and then stood up.

“There you are!” he said, and came trotting up the grassy rise. “And I thought we were good at going unnoticed! I looked round and you’d vanished like a mist, where did you go?” 

“Only into the grass. Why did you go to speak with them, the Naugrim? They walk loudly in their heavy boots, and they look at trees and see nothing but firewood.” 

Tam frowned. “They were only the tinners. They come by every now and then, to re-tin our pots and pans, and we sell them baskets. The dwarves make the best tinners, but we Little-people are the best basket-weavers, and so that makes things work very nicely.” 

“Still, I would not care to go among them alone,” Lyski told him, obscurely troubled. “Any one of them could bundle you up and carry you off.”

Tam gave her a wry look. “Well, so could you, very likely. But honestly, they might be heavy-footed and loud-voiced, but it’s always a good day when we see the tin-dwarves, with their fine tales of far away and their marvellous toys and trinkets.” He looked up at her biting his lip, and then put his hand in the pocket strung from his belt, saying, “They owed me for the last set of baskets... I bought you this. I didn’t know about... well, here it is anyway.” 

He brought out a long bronze pin, and held it out to her tentatively, as if she were a deer of the woods that the least movement might startle into flight. The head of the pin was set with the figures of two small singing birds, with eyes made of green flecks of stone. It was clearly dwarf-work, finely made, but to her eyes, without the freedom that something made by an elf would have had. 

“I thought you might like to wear it in your hair,” he said, hopefully. 

She took it and turned it in her hands, admiring the way the metal had been worked to give an illusion of delicate feathering on the bird’s wings. It was not something she would have chosen for herself, but he had little, and yet he had bought it for her. 

“You know, they say the king — our king — has had dealings with the dwarves,” she said, slowly, thinking it through. “The Dwarves are going to help him build a new palace in the north so the word goes. And it was kind of you to think of me. I shall wear it, and think of you.” And she pulled her hair back into a dark swirl, and pinned it there, smiling.

****  
They went further and further into the cool shadowed depths of the great wood, and to Lyski, the pace seemed slow. Usually when travelling through the forest she skipped from branch to branch, travelling as much on the ways that ran through the broad arms of the great trees, as on the dim and shadowy ground. But Tam preferred to keep his furry feet firmly on the forest floor. 

“I’m sorry, but I just can’t flit through the trees like one of the Fair Folk,” he said, shaking his curly head emphatically. “I was born a son of the earth, and that’s where I’ll stay, thank you very much!” 

His face was so determined that she laughed. “It was only a thought! I have no plans to carry you off unwilling into the tree-tops!”

His face split in a cheery grin. “I should think not!”

“Though,” she said, mischievous now, as they followed a winding deer-track past twining roots, “I’m sure that’s what some of your people were saying. Particularly the pretty girl with the freckles.”

“What pretty girl with the freckles?” Tam demanded, blinking.

“The one who looked so cross, who was talking to her friend as we left,” Lyski teased him. “A blue feather in her hat, and the biggest brown eyes. She seemed very unhappy that you were going!” 

Tam stopped and buried his face in his hands and groaned. “Don’t you start!” he warned. “Shoned is not... I mean, we aren’t. No, don’t laugh! It’s just that because we’re just the same age...” 

“Your people marry because they are the same age?” Lyski asked, intrigued by this strange custom. 

“Well, we don’t have as long as you do,” Tam told her awkwardly, as he scrambled across a great gnarled root that lay across their path. “We don’t have forever, like you Elves. So, quite soon your family starts saying things like: when are you going to settle down, what about... this girl or that girl. Or this boy, or that. And they’d like you to have... grandchildren and all that sort of thing, before they get too old, and there are only so many girls not married yet...” 

“That’s seems very strange... Do you know, your cheeks have gone quite red?”

“Have they?” Tam said, taking a deep breath and then letting it out slowly. 

“And yet she did look angry, this Shoned who isn’t yours.”

“None the less. Shoned isn’t mine, and more importantly for me, I’m not hers, whatever she thinks. Anyway, it’s not like I’m just going off for no reason! We need help from someone, and if the Elvenking can’t help us, I don’t know what we’ll do.”

“You could have asked your friends the dwarves,” Lyski suggested, still feeling oddly prickly at the cheerful way that Tam had hurried down to greet the Naugrim. 

“For aid against an unknown shadow, a darkness in the heart and spiders in the woodlands? They’re tinners, Lyski. Not warriors.”

“They carry axes,” she said, pointedly. 

Tam spluttered, which made her laugh, and after a moment, he laughed too. “And I’ve got a knife,” he said. “You have a bow. Would you fight the wicked shadows in the wood with that, just you and me and a few friends?”

She laughed. “You hit one with a stone! I wouldn’t, but you... you’re as brave as a...a weasel.”

“A weasel? A weasel? I’m not a weasel!”

And they went on laughing, winding a way across mossy roots and over the years-deep mulch of fallen leaves, as the great trees loomed above them, silent and listening. 

***

As the shadows fell and the wood grew dark around them, Tam made a small fire, and they sat beside it, mostly in companionable silence as the fire crackled and sent flickering light to dance through the dark trunks. 

At length, Lyski glanced at him and saw that her companion’s eyes were closed and he had curled himself up against a great tree-root to sleep. One small hand rested loosely on the dead leaves in front of him, and touched by some instinct she could not quite name, she reached out and laid one of her own long pale hands over it. 

Tam moved and grumbled a little in his sleep, and she wondered what he was dreaming about, he with his strange mortal sleep that came upon him like a little death, freeing his mind and spirit to wander in ways forbidden to Elves; beside the sea, perhaps or through the skies, or even entirely beyond the world. Strange to think that someone so in love with the small ways of the greenwood verges could roam in sleep so far beyond them. 

The leaves stirred in a faint wind high above and she folded her hand around his. Somewhere up there, high above the trees, a west wind was blowing. 

***

But when they reached the wooded foothills of the Mountains of the Greenwood, and enquired of the Elves of the Wood where the Elvenking might be found, he was not there. 

Instead they heard other news, from Elves who had fled north. They spoke of the shadows in the south, a darkness that fell on the hearts of those who approached the old city of Amon Lanc. The ancient stronghold where Old-King Oropher had once reigned had long stood empty and forlorn, peopled only by the trees and ferns that had come spreading up from the lowlands to fill the old roads and towers with elegant tapestries of green. 

Lyski had travelled there once, on one of her endless, restlessly-curious journeys, and wondered at the city of the trees, filled with houses that were green with moss, where the only sound was the rustling of the leaves. 

But nobody would go near Amon Lanc any more, and the trees nearby had turned dark and strange. 

***

The Elvenking himself had travelled still further north, so the rumour went. He had gone away from the mountains and across the great Forest River with many of his people, to build a new stronghold, a palace, or perhaps just a hunting-lodge, depending on who was doing the telling. There were other stories too, out of the south, but those were told in worried whispers, and broke off suddenly. Tam was unsure how much importance to attach to them, since the Elves were carefree and laughing most of the time. 

Tam had grown somewhat used to Elves by now. They were not quite as different to his own folk as he had once thought. They sang, it was true, in voices that seemed to contain echoes of a sorrow and a joy that he felt he had once known, and almost forgotten. But they argued and laughed and exchanged gossip too, just like everyone else. 

“Shall we go on northward?” Lyski asked him, only a couple of days after they had arrived among the swaying upland birches where her people lived. 

“But we only just arrived,” Tam pointed out. It had been the longest journey he had ever made, and though he had not quite got over the excitement of travelling with an elven-lady, he had rather enjoyed waking up that morning knowing that he would not have to spend all day walking.

“The king isn’t here to ask for aid,” Lyski said, her slender face serious. “If we follow the River-road, we could come up with him in a few days, perhaps.”

“Well.” Tam thought about it. “I’ve no reason to stay here. I need to find the Elven-king and ask him to help. But Lyski, you’ve been long away from home. Do you want to go rushing off again? Surely you want to stay for a while with your people?” 

Lyski, reclining on a branch as she often did, shrugged. “All the Greenwood is my home. And beyond, too, I expect, though I haven’t seen much more than the forest yet, I mean to. The mountains and the moors, the valleys, the cities... and the Sea.” 

“The Sea. They say that’s a great wide water, like a lake, only greater, and always moving,” Tam said, shuffling from one foot to another, oddly uneasy.

“Would that not be a fair thing to see?” She laughed. “Come on. Let’s follow the king to his lair, shall we? It will be a fine hunt, to find a stag with such a crown!”

*****

They followed the river northward through the forest, down from the bright hills studded with the bright open forms of birches and rowans, down again into the great oakwood, following a wide stream that rippled silver down between the trees. The weather was kind, and the forest fair, and Lyski was a merry travelling companion. But he thought anxiously of the spiders, and the families seeking to feed their children far from the familiar woodland fringes. 

It seemed a very long time before the stream widened into a young river, running deep and golden now over the winding tree-roots, and joined the Great Greenwood River, running deep and dark through great wooded vales, where hills rose up either side of the water, so that the days became shaded early with the shadow of innumerable mighty trees. 

There at last they found the Elven-king, encamped with a great throng of elves under a mighty beech tree that stood alone in a clearing, “As if the other trees had drawn back respectfully to give her room,” Lyski said admiringly.

“Is that the King?” Tam asked her, looking not at the tree, but at the tall golden-haired Elf seated beneath it, on his head a circlet of deep green oak and beech-leaves. The day was fading, but there in the glade beside the river, long sunbeams still touched lazily on the brown and green garb of elves, and touched the long grass with a warm gold. Some of them were singing, and for all that Tam had heard a fair deal of Elvish singing by now, the sight of the Elven-king all golden with the evening light and the sound of the singing touched his heart. 

Lyski frowned. “I think it must be.” Then she smiled. “Ah, yes! There is my cousin, carrying the jug, over there! He went off with the king. So that must be him. He does have a crown.”

“Right then,” Tam said, settled his pack on his shoulders, and took a deep breath. “Now for it.” 

****

Thranduil looked down at him from a great height, and frowned. “We dare not approach Amon Lanc. Therefore, oh prince of the Small Folk, how can we aid you against this enemy? Shadows lie over our old homes, and envious phantoms of the houseless dead walk amid the trees. Dark enchantments are spreading there. The creatures you have seen are only the start of it.”

“We heard tales of your prowess in battle, o king,” Tam said desperately. “ And we hoped...” 

Thranduil threw up his hands and sighed. “I wish I could come riding to your aid, small prince,” he said. “But I have nothing to offer you. My own people have orders to move northward, fleeing the darkness. You will have to do the same.”

“But what shall we do? We’ve always lived along the edges of the Greenwood. We don’t know anywhere else.”

“There, at least, I may be of some small help,” Thranduil said kindly. “It is a bitter loss to lose your home, I know it all too well. But I have found that there is much that is good in the wide world, and not all of it in any one place. You may yet find another home where your hearts may rest to your content. I have maps and records that we can show you, and we can send food to feed your children, and help for your journey.”

“Oh.” Tam said. “Thank you.” He felt very small and out of place among the tall Elves, weary, and very far from home. 

Lyski placed a hand gently on his shoulder. “We tried,” she said. “Would you wish to go back to your family when the sun rises?”

“It’s a long road back,” Tam said unhappily. “So I suppose I’d better get started.”

Thranduil looked around at the elves in the clearing, and then east into the gathering night far over the river. “Stay with us for three days,” he said. “This will be our new home, the hollowdelve in the hills where the Elves of the Wood can find peace and safety, at least for a while. That will give me time to gather Elves and supplies to go with you, back to your own people.”


	2. The Sweet and the Bitter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mortality: its joys and griefs.

Three years later, and the Little People had moved north and west, away from the woodland fringes of the Greenwood, now becoming dark and dangerous, to the shores of the Great River, and those who had decided to settle here were beginning to get used to it. Some of them had gone on westward, following the Dwarf-road through the Misty Mountains into the lands beyond, but Etta declared that road too hard and long, and the riverlands fair enough as a place to build a new home. 

Instead of foraging for nuts and mushrooms, they fished in the river, and Thranduil’s people had given them the gift of woven hives filled with precious bees, great golden bees that roamed the flowering shorelands all summer long, gathering honey, and small, shaggy ponies with clever faces that rarely put a foot wrong even on stony ground. 

They had built new homes burrowed into the long curving slope on the western side of the River, and were beginning to get used to them, although the old gammers and gaffers still grumbled that the new homes were not a patch on the old ones, for all that the Elves of the Wood and the Dwarves of the Mountains had done to help them be warm and comfortable. 

High on the side of the wide river-vale, Lyski was sprawled on a smooth grey rock, with Tam sitting cross-legged beside her. Far below, they could just hear the faint sound of the river rushing over the shallows, but there was no other sound. Here on the hillside in the last light of the day, the evening hush had fallen: the birds were silent, and the bees sleeping, no longer buzzing in the bright heather and yellow gorse. Away in the east where the great forest could just be seen as a dark line across the horizon, the sky was deepening to a velvet blue. 

“Lyski,” Tam said, into the deep quiet of the hills. 

“Mmm?”

“Why are you still here? All the other Elves went back into the forest long ago.”

“You think I should go back to the forest?”

“No!” he said quickly. “I... I only wondered,” he added, his voice trailing off as if he had changed his mind about what he was going to say. He reached over and touched the bronze birds that she still wore in her hair, very gently. 

She caught his hand and held it. “I’m not like the other Elves. You know that.”

“You were born when the west wind was blowing, yes, you said. I still don’t really know what that means though.” 

She kissed his hand on the knuckle, her gaze only on his hand. “It means that I am always looking for something,” she said. “Something they don’t look for. It means I heard your voice, and there was something, something there I recognise, something that calls to me from far off, though it’s nothing I have heard before. I don’t think I would hear it in the voice of any Elf.”

She looked sideways, and up at his face, to find him staring at her, wide-eyed and frozen still, as if facing some savage beast. She hastily let go of his hand. 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to...” 

“No,” he said, rather hoarsely, and swallowed then reached and took her hand back, and carefully kissed each knuckle. “I just... I never thought... I am the luckiest person there ever has  _ been _ , and it’s a bit difficult to wrap my head around... Lyski. Are you. But. I’m. ” 

“But?”

“I’m  _ mortal _ . I’ll get old and  _ die _ and you won’t, and...Is that really what you want? To live with me while I grow old and grey? And then...” 

She looked into his brown worried eyes. “Is it a choice? I don’t want you to die, of course I don’t. But dying is part of you. I’ve known that from the moment I met you. Anyone who loved you would have to know that, and love you anyway.” 

“I’m also rather short,” Tam pointed out, laughter and fear curling on the edge of his voice. 

She laughed, and the laughter in his face chased away the fear. “So am I. For an Elf, anyway. They say that the great King Greycloak in the west was as tall as a six-year oak! I have seen the leaves fall many more times than that, and I don’t think I shall ever grow so high. And a good thing too! It’s easier to explore a tree at my height than if you are a great tall thing. If I could only show you...”

Tam laughed, still holding her hand. “Lyski, no. No climbing of trees for me! If you can love me despite my height and despite my mortality, you can love me with both feet on the ground!” 

“Ah!” she said, and closed her hand to pull him over next to her on the flat rock, still faintly warm from the day’s sun. “Now that is harder!” 

This time he kissed her on the mouth.

*****

The kiss was not unobserved. Shoned, her eyes glittering with hurt indignation, confronted Tam as soon as he returned to the scatter of small round-doored houses now distributed along the steep hillside above the river. 

“She’s bewitched you,” Shoned told him, a hurt edge to her voice. “Listen to me, Tam! All our lives we were going to be together and now...” She put a hand on his arm, and gripped it when he tried to pull it away. 

“Shoned. No.” He shook his head. This was an absurd misunderstanding. “There was no agreement between us. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but it was nothing more than a lot of gossip.”

“How could you even kiss her?” Shoned demanded, without letting go. “You can’t even reach her lips unless she bends down to you. But you and I...” She pulled him closer and he thought for a moment she was going to kiss him to make the point. 

He pulled back reflexively. “Shoned, please!” Lyski was watching them both, her lovely face puzzled and sad, and as Shoned forcibly tucked his arm under hers, she took a step backward into the dim twilight.

Tam gasped, put his hand on Shoned’s shoulder to brace himself, and pulled his arm free. Then he stepped quickly over to stand beside Lyski. 

“I don’t think our personal arrangements are anything at all to do with you, Shoned St uu r! What makes you think you can tell me who I should kiss, or how?” he said. 

Her mouth opened in a wide disappointed shape, almost as if he had hit her in the stomach, and he felt miserable. “Listen. I don’t love you, but we’ve been friends all our lives...”

“It’s a spell.” Her chin was set now, determined, and she was speaking to Lyski, not to him. “I can’t believe a word of it. Let him go!”

“It’s not a spell!” Tam said again, furious. 

Lyski shook her head. “I have no wish to make Tam do anything he doesn’t want to do, Shoned. And if I wished to, I would not know how.”

“You’re an elf,” Shoned said venomously. “Elves work magic, everyone knows. You’ve stolen him and spelled him and now he can’t think straight.”

“Shoned!” Tam was almost shouting now, and people were gathering to watch now, putting down their spindles and their pots and their tools to gather around. “You will not say things like that. Not to me, and certainly not to her!” 

“I will say what I think.” she said, stepping forward, pink-cheeked and puffing a little “And what I think, Tam  Tûca, is that you’ve never been the same since she carried you off into the Wood, and you went to stay with the Elves in the Hollow Hills. You don’t know what you’re saying or doing. I don’t blame you, I blame  _ her _ .”

“Shoned.” Etta had come behind her, and took her rather forcibly by the arm. “Come. I’d like a word, if you don’t mind.”

Shoned was still staring at Lyski, and tears were starting to show at the corners of her eyes. “But...”

“Now, if you would be so kind.” Etta did not quite march her away, but it was close. 

Tam heard no more, and he did not see Shoned again. But a week later, the entire  St uu r clan uprooted itself overnight from the new holes that they had built, packed up their possessions, and without a word, set off southward, down the river. 

“And a good riddance to them,” Etta said, when Tam came to tell her about it. 

*****

They married in the Spring, with all of Tam’s small sisters as their maids, each with curly hair carefully brushed and bunches of flowers in their hands.

Etta came to Lyski before the wedding, when all the preparations usual to the Little People were well underway, to ask about her parents and kinsmen: what family would Lyski have to speak for her?

Lyski thought of her parents for a moment. They had always been kind, and loving, and completely uncomprehending of how they might have come to have a daughter who was born to the west wind. The thought of sending them a message saying she had decided to wed a mortal and leave the Greenwood entirely... She shook her head. “They would not understand.”

“Are you sure, medear? Bless you, I know it can be hard when families don’t agree, but you don’t think they’d want to set aside arguments for this?” 

Lyski wrapped her arms around her knees. “They might,” she said. “But truly, I don’t wish them to. I know that must seem very strange to you. I know you and Tam are dear friends as well as mother and son. But I have had enough and more than enough of being impossible for my own people to understand. I must follow my own road. I know that it may not be what you wanted for your son. Shoned must have seemed the better choice...”

“Not at all!” Etta said quickly  and smiled up at her, a smile that was a little tired, and made Lyski reach out to take her hand. “It was clear from the moment that he met you what he wanted, and I have only ever wanted for him what would make him happy. Poor Shoned never stood a chance beside Tam’s Fairy Queen.” 

“But I am not a queen.”

“Look at yourself reflected in his eyes, and tell me that. I wish you both joy, though I fear you have a hard road ahead of you. Both of you, Tam too, but you most of all, Lyski. Are you sure this is what you want?”

“I am no nightingale princess out of legend, to fight the darkness and follow my love beyond the world,” Lyski told her, very sure of this at least. “I am of Middle-earth, but I was born with the west wind blowing, and that means I will always take strange paths.”

“Well, look after him while you can, medear,” Etta said gently. “His path may seem strange to you, but it is the only one he has, and it’s quite the usual thing to us, you know.” 

“I do know that. He is far more to me than his path through the world, believe me. I will walk beside him as far as I can. And after that, I will remember him, always.” 

“And I will look after him, when he comes back to me,” Etta said. “But this is terrible gloomy talk for a wedding! I brought you a ribbon. Let me tie it in your hair.” 

*****

The years floated by like leaves on a woodland stream, dancing, twirling and shimmering from shade to sunlight, once Tam and Lyski were married. Their first child came swiftly, a small opinionated presence from the moment that Lyski first felt her spirit awake into life. 

She was born a little early by Lyski’s count and a little late by the count of the assembled old ladies of the Little People, after a labour that Etta declared with delight to be the swiftest and most painless that she had ever witnessed. Tam named the baby Cara, meaning ‘beloved’, and held forth enthusiastically to anyone who would listen, to explain that she was the most beautiful child ever born.

Lyski, with a mother’s more pragmatic eye, was relieved to see that she was hale and healthy, with a fine strong voice despite her small size. She had Tam’s snub nose and Lyski’s fair complexion, and so when he came along, did her brother Tom and later, his little brother Temmit, the three little girls, Etta, Violet and Heather, and their youngest, who after much thought, Lyski had named Moon-daisy, though usually she was just known as Little Moo. 

Lyski had never longed to be a mother, let alone a mother of so many children: a number quite unheard of among the Elves of the Wood, and a very respectable number even among the more prolific Little People. When she knew the small spark of life within her that would one day be Temmit, Cara was only just old enough to climb while small Tom sat on the grass watching her, round-eyed and solemn. She feared then that she might not be enough to care for so many children, small as they were. But Tam reassured her, and she found that after all, they seemed to be doing well enough. 

Life among the Little People, with her love and her children around her, was rich, different from all she had known. It was no bad thing to be a beloved wife and mother, tallest and fairest of them all, praised generously for her voice and for her talent in healing, which as she told them smiling, was small enough among the people she had been born to. 

There were new and strange things to be discovered every day, even without wandering too far from the new hole-homes along the river-shore. 

Men lived on the shores of the Great River, with their tub-like river-boats and long-maned horses. Lyski had never seen Men close-up before, and she found them almost as interesting as their smaller cousins: near as strong-armed as Dwarves, and near as tall as Elves, they thrust their boats across the wide waters, using long oars driven with great strength through the fast-flowing river. 

The ferry-boats of Men brought other travellers, too. Dwarves travelling across the land from the west into the distant east, bringing many clever devices and useful things in return for food and fire. She almost forgot her distrust of them after a while. Now and again, there would even be an Elven envoy, travelling into the mountains out of the Greenwood, bearing news from Thranduil to his kin in the West. Sometimes there was a word or two for Lyski from her kinsmen too. 

At those times, she found herself looking up across the wide river, to the distant purple heights of the mountains, watching the wild wisps of cloud riding the wind out of the west. But then Tam would take her hand in his, or her children would call for her, or one of her friends, and she would remember that the West Wind did not always bring happiness.

*****

When Cara had grown to be a fine young woman, the tallest of all the Little People, and was walking out with that same Habbi who had once chewed on the toe of Lyski’s boot, the winter was an unusually cold one. The voices of wolves were often heard on the cold wind, that winter, and the edges of the Great River and the grasses where the wild deer roamed glittered with a bitter ice. The shaggy ponies huddled together against the frost. The turf roofs of the inconspicuous hole-houses along the river-shore could be seen at night from the faint streams of smoke and the red sparks that flew up from time to time from the small turf-fires. 

Very likely that was what attracted the goblin raiders.

They came at dead of night, silent, until they reached the fence of artfully woven thorns that looked like nothing more than bushes that had unaccountably arranged themselves into a barrier. But the goblins were mounted on wolves, tall and strong. They leaped the barrier, laughing, and came among the guards before the alarm could be raised. 

The Little Folk can fight fiercely if they have no choice, and Lyski fought with them, wielding long knives that were more usually used for cooking, against the goblin spears and the teeth of wolves. 

It was probably a brief battle, but it felt like a very long one, with shrieking goblins chasing terrified children, wolf-teeth red in the light of the flaming torches thrust into small homes, and far, far too much blood. 

When the goblins were driven off at last, and the tired, fearful people began to count the damage, there were nine dead, three people missing and six pigs. 

Lyski was trying very hard not to think about the missing, in the darkness and confusion, when Katla came to her, tearstained with ash on her clothes, and pulled at her arm wordlessly.

A little way beyond the fires, in the shadow of the hedge, a small huddled form lay. Katla ran to it, and lifted a broken, bloody hand, cradling it gently in both of hers. 

Lyski looked at Etta’s small face, and her chest, shuddering for each breath, and thought of wild winds and gulls crying over a sea that she had never known. 

“Katla, could you find Tam?” she asked, and Katla in turn steadied herself, and turned to go. 

Lyski took the old lady’s hand, and Etta’s brown eyes opened a little. Her body was torn and broken, her spirit pulsing bright with shocks of pain. Lyski reached out, instinctively, trying to ease the agony, trying to patch the broken bone and mend torn flesh. 

Etta shook her head very slightly. “Too late,” she whispered. “There’s no magic cure for this, medear.” 

“Let me try, let me ease the pain a little, at least,” Lyski said, holding onto her thin and wrinkled hand, wishing she knew more about healing the many woes of mortal bodies. 

And then Tam was there beside her.  Etta said no more, but watching, Lyski saw the life within her body ripple strangely, as if she were young and old at once, and then the faintest echo going swiftly westward, as if a mirror-reflection in a stream had stood up and walked away. 

But for Tam, all he saw was the shadows darkening under the dark eaves of the tangled thorns as his mother fell asleep, and he wept with Lyski’s arm around him as if he were a child. She looked down on him, on the back of his curly head in her arms, and saw with a shock that his hair was already turning grey. 

They had not seen the last of the goblin-raids. The first was the most shocking, and the one that did most damage, but the days of relative safety were now a memory. They dug holes deeper into the hillsides, made hidden pits along the thorny fences, and traded a little of the precious honey, a few of the ponies and some of the shining sand that could be found here and there along the river-shore with the nearest village of Men, in return for a number of large and enthusiastic dogs. 

When Cara’s first child was born, Lyski was not there. There was talk of more goblins, larger, fiercer, coming down out of the North, and she had gone out with a handful of the younger men of the village, to call out from hidden places, and lead the danger away from their homes. 

When she got back, Cara, tired but triumphant, was sitting with Tam’s arm around her, and a small, snub-nosed son in her arms, and Lyski thought she had never seen anything more lovely than the three of them together. You could see that all three were alike, and yet also very different: the baby, the young mother, the proud grandfather. A joyful moment, and yet also a sharply bitter one, for there was no grey in Lyski’s hair, and never would be. Her face looked no older than Cara’s, and yet Tam’s face was beautiful still, wrinkled and filled with the winding story of his growing mortal life, and there were few dark hairs left on his head. 

But there was still time. She sat down and took Tam’s hand, and Cara placed the baby on her lap, and she sang to him, a joyful west-wind song made up in the moment and never to be repeated. 

*****

Tam went out less often nowadays to gather food or hunt or even to trade. He was not as swift as he had once been, and anyway, they were better off now, as the villages of the Little People had grown, and trade with the Big People and the Dwarves had prospered. Lyski and Katla together had begun baking honey-cakes, which Tam loved dearly. He grew a small soft paunch that made her laugh, and he laughed back, looking at her with brown eyes that were still filled with as much love and admiration as they had ever been. 

She took to braiding the soft breast-feathers of the wild white swans into her dark hair, to match his grey, and she adorned her eyelids with willow-charcoal now, because there were faint dark smudges around his eyes that never quite went away. 

They were rich years, the years of Tam’s old age, filled with many grand-children, and soon, great-grandchildren too, and though the threat of goblin-raids was an ever-present threat, the small hidden villages along the rivershore survived and prospered. 

Until, one night, she lay beside him, and heard his breath falter, once, twice, and then felt his kindly, loving spirit slip away from her reaching hands and vanish. 

She had always known it could not last. She had always known him mortal, and loved him for it, but that did not make that night any easier, not at all. She plucked the swans-feathers from her hair, and wept that their time together was over. 

*****

It seemed to be quietly agreed by everyone that Lyski could not be the matriarch of the  Tûca  clan, but then, she had never wanted to be anything of the kind. Cara was the leader that they wanted, and it was Cara who took her place at the centre of the clan, deciding squabbles and making sure that the goblin-watch was kept, and that nobody went hungry. 

Cara’s hair was grey as clouds on the river, now, but her face was still fair and smooth, and when she sang in her clear voice like water falling, it was not only her mother that could see the pictures she called from the fire; the trees laden with white blossom, the bright stars, the swift riders and the eagles that soared in her song. 

She lived longer than her father had, little Cara. She lived to see the shadows they had fled come creeping towards them: from the South, from Amon Lanc, that Men called Dol Guldur, now, and from the North, as the goblins and their larger and more terrible cousins the orcs came spreading down the Misty Mountains. 

Lyski, venturing quietly towards the nearest village of Men, saw tall stockades, and men riding in well-armed companies. Men were not always kindly in their strength, towards those smaller and weaker. Their voices were mocking, sometimes, and their honesty could not be trusted. The Little People redoubled their efforts to go unseen. Even when there were no goblin raids or whispering shadows, the vale of the Great River was not a safe place for a small people who were not notable for their skill in battle. 

There came at last a day when Cara came to her mother, and asked; if they should leave their homes, should they travel east, in hope of taking shelter with the Elvenking in the Greenwood? Or should they cross the mountains like the Little Folk who had gone before them, and hope to find a new home in the West?

Lyski remembered the Elvenking, how he had been kind, and had aided them as far as he was able, and how he had said to them both, Tam and Lyski standing together, that they should flee the darkness. 

The last envoy she had met from the King had spoken in troubled tones of shadows spreading, and the dwarven tinners passing through spoke now not of Greenwood the Great, but of Mirkwood. 

She shook her head, and said to her daughter, “I don’t think that there is safety in the Greenwood. Not any more.” 

Cara took her hand. “I thought that, but... I suppose I hoped you might think differently.”

Lyski shook her head, and put an arm around Cara, to comfort her, or herself, or both of them perhaps. The last of the Little People left East of the mountains began preparations to travel West. 

But Cara never saw the land West of the mountains. Nor did Temmit, and nor did Tom, for the mountain-passes were wild and dangerous, the home of trolls and many evil creatures. They had nearly left the crossing too late. But there was little time for weeping for her lost children, who had, after all, lived lives long and full, when there were supplies to be carried, bee-skeps to be kept dry, children to be fed, pigs to be counted, and shelter to be found against the wild wind-storms that came whistling bitter through the stones.

When they came down from at last from the mountain-passes, it was Moon-daisy who led them, Little Moo no longer. She had grown up the tallest of all Tam’s children, and her fair hair was near as long as Lyski’s own, though her face was more like Tam’s than any of their other children. 

They hurried, tired and cold, down the western slopes, over great heather-clad ridges starred with the bright yellow flowers of the prickled gorse. They were not moving swiftly. When they saw the tall forms of Men with spears marching up the hillside towards them, some of them scattered into the bushes, but most did not have the energy to do anything but sit down and wait for whatever fate would bring them next. 

Lyski stood watching, poised to flee, but unwilling to leave her great-grand-children. 

But the Men stopped on the road, and conferred for a moment. Then one of them took off his shining helm, handed his long spear to a comrade, and came up to Lyski and Moon-daisy, tallest of the group, and bowed low. 

“Word of your coming has been sent to us from Amon Sûl, ladies,” he said, in a strangely-accented form of Sindarin. “I am Osian of Rhudaur. We have been sent to aid and protect you on the road West. Welcome to Arnor, and the Lands of the Kings!”

Moon-daisy managed an answering bow. “Thank you!” she said, in her own language, in a clear voice that the people hidden in the gorse-bushes could hear. “I am glad to hear you have come to help us. I... Mother, ask him, who are these kings they speak of? It can’t be the Elven-king, can it?” 

Lyski turned to the tall Man, but he smiled, clearly understanding her daughter’s words. 

“Nay, my lady,” Osian answered, in Sindarin. “My king is Tarcil of Rhudaur, which is the land you have come into, here between the mountains and the western hills. To the northwest of Rhudaur lies Arthedain, where a man called Mallor is King, and to the southwest, Cardolan, whose prince is Arvegil. All three kingdoms are within the bounds of the ancient realm of Arnor, founded by the Kings from beyond the Sea, and so we like to call them the Lands of the Kings. Your people are known here, and many of them dwell along the Road, and across the border too, in Arthedain, I have heard.”

“Well!” Moo exclaimed. “That’s quite a mouthful, but I am sure we shall get used to it all in time.”

“I’m sure you will,” Osian said smiling. “I’m sorry I cannot speak your tongue. I can make it out, but I can’t manage to wrap my tongue around it.”

“Me too,” Moo told him. “Only, the other way around. But maybe we’ll all learn to speak Elvish, now we’re west of the mountains!”

Osian laughed. “We don’t all speak the Elvish here!” he told her. “Certainly not all the time. Most people talk in Westron, do you know it?” He said a few words that sounded like they probably meant something, but neither Moo nor Lyski could make them out. 

Moo shook her head. “We’ll get the hang of it soon enough,” she said confidently. 

*****

They settled in Rhudaur for a little while after that. A little while, a few seasons, long enough for Moo to learn to speak the Westron tongue, to grow tired, and old and fat, and die abruptly, while shouting crossly at a pig that had been eating one of her shoes, the last of Lyski’s children to depart. 

But Rhudaur did not remain peaceful. There were troubles between the Men, and arguments between Men and the Elves of Imladris, and the land was troubled. After a while, the Little People set off west again, more slowly this time, travelling the wide fields and riverside meadows of Rhudaur to rejoin their long-sundered kin in Arthedain. 

Lyski was the only one who could now recall the people who had left to go before, while the  Tûca clan lingered in the riverlands. It was strange to meet them again after so long, and realised that these people who now seemed small and dark, looked very much as Tam had looked, and Etta, and all her friends when she had first met and befriended the  Tûca clan on the margins of the Greenwood. 

Lyski’s children and her grand-children and all of their many descendants were taller, and their faces and hair were often fairer than the rest, and the hair on their feet was often a little sparse and not so neatly curled. In Arthedain, the people who had arrived before them named them Fallowhide, for their pale skins, and considered them somewhat disreputable: lingerers, dreamers, disturbers of the King’s Peace, even. In return, the Fallowhides named those who had gone before them Harfoots, for their woolly feet, and a friendly rivalry sprang up between the two groups. 

But Arthedain was nearer to the Sea than Lyski had ever been. Not very near, but she knew that far beyond the hills and the downs, beyond the blue mountains, waves washed upon an unseen shore. 

One autumn evening as the sun was setting, the brightness of it reflecting in the pools of the marshes that lay west of the Weather Hills, she heard a sound that was unfamiliar, and yet it called to her as if it was a sound she was born to, a wild music that she had always known in her heart. 

She heard the mournful crying of gulls, telling tales of a great storm at sea, and it was a trouble to her, and a keen joy that lifted her heart all at once. 

She went to her great-great grandchildren, those at least who were most dear to her, who still had some vague idea that this strange Elf of the wood was a kinswoman, and she said her farewells. 

###  To the Sea

She wandered westward, through oak woodlands that whispered to her in phrases that reminded her of the Greenwood of long ago, and onward, up across green rolling downs where small shining flowers shone among the wind-shaken grasses, and gulls cried overhead, until one day, she crested a ridge and saw before her the great singing silver emptiness of the Sea.

She went on, singing a song that came to her mind out of the sound of wind blowing and the waves crashing, and at last came to a high place where on short green turf under the sun, a grey figure stood, looking into the West. His beard and hair were long, and he was dressed simply, and she knew him to be the Mariner of the tales.

She sat beside him companionably for a while, and then, since he said nothing, began to tell him her sorrows.

“They are all gone. My love Tam, my dear-mother Etta, my children, my grand-children. They don’t remember me, or only as a fairy-story, a tale to tell. It grieves my heart. Do you think that I might find peace beyond the Sea?” 

The Mariner, moving at last, shook his grey head and spoke, in a voice that was ancient beyond words, and yet clear and strong. “I cannot tell you that. I have never travelled beyond the Sea, and what I have heard from those few who have done so and returned is confused. A land of peace and plenty, they say, a land of light, once, and now a land full of memory of things long lost. But whether there is peace there for you, Elf of the Greenwood, I cannot say. ”

Lyski said slowly, thinking it through. “There was a time when I longed for the west wind blowing, for new lands and new faces. But I’ve lost so many of them, by now. For a long time, I wanted to linger here, to remember them and see their children grow, but now... Perhaps across the Sea, I will walk in my memories of my lost ones, and find peace.” 

“Perhaps,” the ancient elf said and his eyes in his tanned, tired face were very blue as he turned to look out across the waters. “Perhaps not. But I too have heard the West Wind calling in my time. I cannot answer. It is not my time. But you can. You have no task to do here in Middle-earth.”

“That’s true. I have nothing to hold me here: I could blow across the water, light as linden leaf on a spring morning. But it’s a hard choice. What if there’s nothing for me on the other side?” 

The old elf smiled and ran a hand down his long silky beard. “We should envy one another. I have a task to do, and there is no leaving it, no matter if I wish to go or stay. And you have the choice I lack, and nothing to say which side of the Sea will be the brighter.”

She smiled up at him in return. “So you won’t give me any advice?” 

He held up a hand. “May the stars stand against that! The older I become, the more I come to see that I can give counsel wisely to no-one but myself. But if it is only a task to do that you lack, I’ll ask you a favour. I have kinsmen in the West, who I have longed to see again. I have not seen many of them since the stars were young, and it may be that I shall not see them again until the Darkness returns to cover all of Middle-earth. Will you take a message for me?”

“Surely anyone on the ship can do that?” Lyski asked, uncertain.

“Not to the kinsman I would send a message to,” he told her. “He was a young man when I knew him, and now he rides the stars. It may not be easy to seek him out.”

“I’ll do it,” she said, and jumped to her feet. “When does the ship sail?” 

**Author's Note:**

> The tale of Tam Took and Lyski of the Greenwood was never told to anyone important who bothered to write it down, and has only recently been recorded for the first time as a result of the work of the the new Oxford University Department of History (Interdimensional Outreach) Aural History Project. 
> 
> A version of the Stoor version of the tale with the ending changed appears to be preserved in [a number of ballad variants](https://tam-lin.org/) that tell of the rescue of Tam Lin by his true love Janet, from the Queen of the Fairies.
> 
> Very few names survive that are not Sindarin in form, but appear to be formed in the older and more rustic language of the Wood-elves. It is notable that 'Lyski', like 'Amroth', is a name that is also preserved as a place-name on the western coast of Wales: Porthlysgi, or Lyski's Harbour.


End file.
